YOU can almost hear Saturday's footie results on Radio 5 now.

"And here is this seasons trophy count read as always by James Alexander Gordon."

"Arsenal 2 Liverpool 0."

"Blackburn Rovers 1 Manchester United 0."

Barring a disaster for Arsenal there will be only two domestic trophy winners this season.

When you consider the PLC Board at the Theatre of Merchandising sanctioned a fee of £28m for a single player it puts our achievement in winning a piece of silverware in an even more creditable light.

To my mind the Premiership this season has been played out at three, or possibly four, noticeably different levels.

Fighting for the Title we have had the perceived "big 3" of Arsenal, Man Utd. and Liverpool. Even within that little cartel I would argue that the solid and dependable Scousers are still a long way behind the other two who are admittedly exceptional sides.

A distance again off that pace, contesting the last Champions League place, we have had Newcastle, Chelsea and Leeds.

All good sides but certainly not outstanding. Newcastle as we saw recently at Ewood are a very well drilled outfit.

Chelsea can be superb on their day but in the past couldn't beat Burnley on their off days. For a short period Leeds reminded me of us c1992 -95 in the way we attracted the best young talent but they could well turn out to be the current era's perennial underachievers.

As for the the rest, well, underwhelmed doesn't even begin to describe it. In seventh Tottenham (beat them in the Worthy Final and at Ewood). In eighth West Ham (beat them 7 ( seven) -1.) In ninth Villa (beat them 3-0). In tenth Middlesbrough ( beat them 3-1 away)

While all this might sound a bit bigheaded the point I'm making is that we can clearly see the level we should be aiming for.

No side boasting the talent of the likes of Friedel, Tugay, Duff, Dunn, Jansen, and now Cole should have been flirting with relegation, and on the whole we seem to have played with considerably more confidence following the Cup win.

So what sort of season have we had as a club? Graeme Souness predicted before the season started that we would get punched on the nose this season and so it proved.

Even so who would have predicted a mid-season run quite as bad as two draws and ten defeats out of 12?.

Furthermore with one game against Liverpool to come, we've been superb against the top six sides without getting the results we've deserved.

Against three of the bottom four, Leicester, Derby and Sunderland, we've been far less impressive and drawn one point out of a possible 18.

What all that shows is we need to be far more consistent next time round.

Off the field, the fans have responded well with an average gate of around 26,000. Pretty good for our first season back and a figure certain of our local rivals can only dream about.

If Manchester United had a similar percentage take up amongst the local population they would boast gates of over 200,000.

Notwithstanding that there are still some seats available at Uncle Jack's spacious new Ewood. I would urge all casual attenders to scrimp, save, beg, steal or borrow and fill the place to the rafters on a regular basis next season.

After all European football and the brightest young talent in the country in Duff, Dunn and Jansen. It doesn't come much better than that does it?